Ripple
by schweinsty
Summary: Sometimes Leonard McCoy wonders what his life would have been like in another life. Sometimes he's pretty sure he doesn't want to know. Warning: death of a child


A.N. Those familiar with my lj account know I've had this up for two years - but, like several other fics (including a couple more Trek ones) I simply forgot to upload it here. I'm planning on catching my ff account up to my lj fic account, but I don't want to spam, so I'm going to space out the uploads.

**Ripple**

On stardate 2250.16, Leonard McCoy rushes his very pregnant wife to the hospital. She's gone into labor two months early. Leonard is frantic. He paces up and down the waiting room and drums his fingers on his thigh when the nurses tell him to sit down.

At five o'clock on the dot, Jocelyn McCoy delivers a beautiful, premature baby girl. It's a long, hard fight, but the attending doctor remembers an intubation trick she learned at her first delivery, seventeen years ago, and thanks to her skills, both mother and daughter pull through.

Leonard and Jocelyn name their precious, perfect baby Joanna after the doctor who saved her life. They hold their daughter in their arms and count her fingers and toes and cry (though Leonard will later insist he never shed any tears). They take little Joanna home and send Dr. Joanna some cookies and a bouquet of lilies, and live in blissful happiness for two or three years, before Leonard's career and Jocelyn's studies and the stress of trying to raise a child drive them apart. It's a relatively amicable divorce, and, though Leonard decides it's for the best to leave when Dr. Joanna offers him a referral to Starfleet, he sends more letters and holovideos back home than most of the crew of the Enterprise combined, and, when Joanna is accepted to the microbiology program at Ole Miss, he's so proud he thinks he'll burst.

Sometimes he wonders what life would have been like if he and Jocelyn had never had children, if they would still have gotten divorced. He thinks he's happier this way.

Eighteen years before Jocelyn McCoy gets pregnant, Joanna O'Brien recieves her degree in medicine and advances to the rank of lieutenant, garnering her a posting on a first-class starship. She has a celebratory bash with her family and friends, gets smashed, and wakes up underneath a pool table in her best friends living room the next morning with the worst hangover she's ever had.

Life is brilliant.

A few months later, she discovers that one of the lieutenants on the ship is pregnant, and Joanna has been chosen to supervise the delivery. It will be her first delivery ever, and Joanna is ecstatic. She monitors the health of mother and child with an attention to detail that has her superiors dropping hints about a possible promotion.

On stardate 2233.04, Joanna records a holovideo to send to her sister. The mission the ship is on is going better than expected, she says, and her patients are doing wonderfully. Joanna has to cut the recording short when a runner comes up with some unexpected but exhilarating news: Lieutenant Kirk is going into labor, and Joanna is needed in the sick bay.

Joanna runs to the turbolift and shuts the door. She is just grabbing onto a navigation bar when Nero fires his first wave of torpedoes, and the deck she is on explodes.

On stardate 2250.16, Leonard McCoy rushes his very pregnant wife to the hospital. She's gone into labor two months early. Leonard is frantic. He paces up and down the waiting room and drums his fingers on his thigh when the nurses tell him to sit down.

At five o'clock on the dot, Jocelyn McCoy delivers a beautiful, premature baby girl. It's a long, hard fight, and in the end, the attending doctor barely manages to save the mother's life.

Leonard and Jocelyn name their precious, perfect baby Leslie, after Leonard's mother. They hold their daughter in their arms and count her fingers and toes . Leonard cries. Jocelyn sobs uncontrollably.

Leslie McCoy dies two hours after her birth.

Leonard and Jocelyn try to grieve together, try to cope, but they grieve too differently, and words that, in another life might just have driven them apart, become weapons that sting in this one. The divorce, when it comes four years later, is less an agreement of dissolution than it is the release of all the pent-up anger they've built up over the years. It is not nice, and it is not amicable, and at the end of it they are bitter and tired and jaded and angry still, and it rankles.

Jocelyn takes it out on Leonard. Leonard takes it out on himself, and when he has nothing left but a grimy apartment and a flask of whiskey, he gives it up and joins Starfleet. He never sees Jocelyn again.

Sometimes he wonders what life would have been like if Leslie had lived, if he and Jocelyn would have weathered it out, or if fate would have dragged him onto the Enterprise instead. Sometimes, when they stop by New Vulcan, he almost convinces himself to go see Spock, to ask him whether Leonard McCoy had a daughter in this other life. But he never does.

He thinks he's happier not knowing.

He's probably right.


End file.
